Raindrops Teardrops
by miteranyx
Summary: And that's when Rin realizes. He wants to simultaneously brain Haruka, kiss him, break him, fuck him, swim with him, and defeat him. He is So Screwed.
1. Whilom

**Chapter Text**

Rin has always known it- known it like the indescribable feeling that crawls over his skin and settles in his bones just before a thunderstorm; or the way he knows each fine nuance of how the clear, calm blue of Samezuka's Olympic-sized pool will yield, genuflect at his cleaving touch; or the way he knows that the sun shines and the rain falls and a million other things that he's lived with so long that they've wormed their way into the permanence of his subconscious.  
It is raining when he starts thinking, really _thinking_ about it, oddly enough. Thunder streaks across the leaden sky as if the equivocal divinity above has decided to exact all its vengeance at once, and Rin stretches out from where he's leaning back in one of the window-settees in his academy's common room, listening to the satisfying snap of long-cramped joints pop.

"So we didn't get to go running, after all," he remarks to Sousuke, who is currently on the brink of sleep at the opposite end of the settee, mainly to fuck his nap up. "Bummer."

"Hmmm," comes the noncommittal reply, furthering the discussion clearly not on Sousuke's priority list. So Rin lets up, the urge to reach further, to push and push and _push_ the other out of their comfort zone only possessing him with one person ( _only ever_ with one person) and the conversation dies down.

"Not interested in telling them the story of how something slimy grabbed your foot one time in the pool?"  
Sousuke's voice, pitched barely above a sleepy rasp, comes to him after a beat.

Rin lets escape a yawn, eyes flicking lazily over to where most of his companions, led predictably by Momotarou, were playing some sort of spooky-storytelling game.

" _No_ thank you," he waves his hand dismissively. The other boy just quirks an eyebrow.

"Don't tell me that Matsuoka Rin, erstwhile owner of _the_ lamest spider-on-a-stick pranks in history, has lost his taste for horror."

Rin scowls at his friend, scrubbing a hand through his hair and glancing away.

"This one time in Australia, Russell and Lori did a Hallowe'en thing for me, and I totally freaked. So that cured me of any obsession I ever had with spookiness," he mutters, a faint blush working its way up his cheeks.

Sousuke doesn't reply, and they sit in silence for a bit, before the monotone thud of rain lulls his customary brusqueness enough to let the question slip. "Did you... think about any of us back there?"

And Rin doesn't reply to that, not for a while, because _what does Sousuke fucking think._

 _And what words can Rin fucking use to describe the ache that throbbed in his chest when he flicked through the Sano-Iwatobi scrapbook he'd made, the slow, paralysing ice that inhibited his fingers as soon as they put pen to paper._

"What do you fucking think? Not like I needed company to climb Ayers Rock, or anything," he flashes a tight, sharp-toothed grin, hoping Sousuke will just drop it there.

"And whose fault is it that I never had any idea?" his friend half-mutters, even quieter than usual. The bitterness his impassivity hides so well, though, comes through to Rin clear as a bell. And perhaps Sousuke, _damn him_ , senses something of his friend's ill-concealed discomfort, because he suddenly smirks. "Goodness knows you were up to some _much_ more interesting activities _down under,_ if you know what I mean."

"Yeah, that's something your lonely bed and your right hand would _pay_ to witness," Rin snarks back, biting out a somewhat relieved laugh at the blatant change of subject. He throws his head back, eyes tracing the pattern of cemented cracks spiderwebbing across the ceiling. _Reminiscent of the fucking face he put on to the world._

And _god fuck him_ , it had always been like that. Chinks in his iron-steel-titanium-plated armor, wormed into and filled by the swish of long, silken hair, the softness of wandering hands, and the persistent, acrid fragrance of cheap perfume.

 _Sex_.

It had all but consumed him, he had _let_ it consume him, back then. Anything he could do, reaching for the crimson rush of base sensation to burn out the pools of bottomless, electric blue that haunted his sleep and waking alike. He had been sixteen and just that side of jaded, what with swimming through water to forget that the sun looked like Haruka's faint, barely-there smile; and swimming through sensation to forget that the stars looked like Haruka's eyes when they sighted a particularly large body of water. And with the exhaustion of the two tearing him either way, it had been easy to ignore his Australian parents' worried attempts to get him to open up.

 _He's flying off the rails._

"Remind me again why we have to have joint practices with Iwatobi?" Sousuke's baritone yanks Rin out of his reverie, which is just as well, considering how it was leading him nowhere good.

"Because Ryuugazaki still beat you last time, so buck your ass up,"

Sousuke scowls at him.

"Yeah, sure," he mutters under his breath, Rin just barely catching it. "Like this has got nothing to do with your big, fat crush on Nanase."

It is a moment before Rin remembers to put on his outraged face.

" _Excuse_ me?"

He glares when he just gets that annoying knowing look of his friend's in return.

"I'm sorry, but there are plenty of fish in the sea who are not weird, water-obsessed freaks," he tosses back, putting all his (always, _always_ ) pent-up vehemence behind it. "Why _Haru_ , of all people?"

And Rin is actually _really fucking lucky_ that all the emotional fuckery he's undergone hasn't fried his brain cells, because he kind of needs to change the subject, _now_.

"And besides," he picks up the conversation, entirely disregarding Sousuke's _I'm pretty sure all the fish in the sea are water-obsessed freaks,_ "Are you sure the two-tenths of a second Ryuugazaki had on you didn't have anything to do with your bigger, fatter crush on Makoto?"

Sousuke's cheeks take on a dull flush, and Rin feels a vague sense of enjoyment as he lets his subsequent evil grins and snipes go on autopilot, mind disconnecting as it _freaks the fuck out._  
 _Why had he been so scarily calm at Sousuke's insinuation?_

 _Why had he had to remind himself to react?_

The answers stare him in the face with the same quiet intensity as the sapphire gaze they concern.

And Rin turns from them, just like he's always turned from the candor in those eyes, uncomfortable as that candor inspired the like from deep within him.

But they still bore into his back, spreading out over his skin, under it, fluid like a pricking caress he can't ignore.

 _He can't ignore Haruka._

 _He's never_ wanted _to._

And so, he can't ignore that, when accused of harbouring feelings for him, he didn't even flinch, because _of fucking course he harboured feelings for Haruka.  
He harboured a fucking myriad of unfathomable feelings, ocean-deep and just as turbulent, for Haruka._

 _The only question was, just what_ were _they?  
Rivals, maybe. Certainly not friends.  
But neither of the two explained the low curl of heat in his belly when their gazes locked, the mystifying magnetism that drew his touch, invariably, to the alabaster curves and angles tracing a path from the obsidian ink of an unruly fringe.  
Drew it to wreck, destroy, watch the ice crash and _burn _. And maybe, just maybe, it would melt the frigid fear that Haruka swept in with himself._

 _What mattered, between them, except winning?_

Rin closed his eyes, listening the the thump of the unrecognisable music on the radio align with his heartbeat. He was _not_ looking forward to next Thursday's joint practice.

Chapter Management


	2. Atramentous

Matsuoka Rin is _not_ having a good day.

First, his goddamn fucking alarm clock decides to break down on him, causing him to have to ditch his customary morning swim. His sleep schedule fucking up notwithstanding, the lack of exercise also means that he acts like a brat on a sugar high all through English, Old Japanese _and_ Biology, his teachers looking askance at his fiddling hands and wavering concentration, which just makes him _even more restless._

The long and short of it is that he lands up with two extra assignments and a pounding headache before it is even 12 pm.

The thrum of nervous energy nevertheless makes his fingers quiver ever so slightly as he pulls his jammers on. Because today is Thursday, and _of fucking course_ he hasn't forgotten.

Today is the first time he's going to see Haruka since that little... _epiphany_ he had. If Rin could even call the haphazard bunch of unwelcome thoughts that have evidently declared war on his sanity that.

And epiphanies, evidently, have more far-reaching causatums than purely superficial understanding would betray; something Rin, after being woken up every single night that week gasping for air, engulfed by illimitable, bottomless sapphire ink; or worse, _so much worse,_ half-hard from the flutter of sooty lashes and the stark of ivory musculature carved out from amongst the subtle dips of a lithe, undulating form, can testify to.

So Rin thinks it's _pretty fucking understandable_ that his entire body is pulled taut as a bowstring with the need for kinesis as he gets done changing and walks to the pool, almost unbearably sensitised to everything around him. His vision instinctively scans the area for the ultramarine he knows will irrevocably rivet him the second he lays eyes on it.

 _Just as it always had._

 _Because it'd always been different with Haruka_

 _Because_ he'd _always been different with Haruka._

He whips his head around when Mikoshiba yells at him to get in the water, and mentally shakes himself. He cannot get sidetracked now, because hadn't he made an iron-clad promise to never let emotion get in the way of the win again? When he'd been fourteen and untarnished and just that side of naïve, thinking that any of this would be _easy_ , hadn't he clutched at his chest after every fucked race, every time-trial when the numbers he had— _always, always too high_ — refused to budge even a quarter of a second, willing the straitjacket of disillusionment to just let him _breathe?_ It hadn't been until that accursed day, when it had all come crashing down on him that the constrictions had drawn so tight that his heart had _burst_.

When Haruka had beaten him, in spite, in _fucking laugh-in-your-face spite_ of every single extra hour Rin had spent in pursuit of his iridescent dream, in sheer _mockery_ of every shred of determination Rin had, with the heat of tears still burning at his eyes, Rin had realised one thing.

That the drip-trickle of those little salten rivulets he let escape only flowed with the water he was trying to impound, flowed _against him._ And the only way he could defeat it was burn a crimson-carmine path through the azure.

 _He would not cry again._

And he's done a _fucking fabulous_ job of it so far, he thinks, his sudden resurgence of confidence rippling outwards in a cocky toss of his head, teeth instinctively baring themselves in a predatory grin as the energy radiating from his pores concentrates itself into a single, excruciating point at the base of his spine. He _knows_ this, and he can fucking _own_ the water. He can't describe the feeling that courses through him, the adrenaline that builds up and up and _up_ , the tension like the stinging snap of his goggle strap against his head. He had no words to describe the thrill of it all coalescing into something otherworldly as he finally, finally

 _dives._

Rin has never been a fan of silence, but the combination of the shock from the temperature difference and the defibrillating aquamarine world where all he can see is blinding light renders his focus hazy and razor-sharp all at once.

He doesn't know what it means. But the good thing about water is that, in there, he doesn't _need_ to. Doesn't need to justify himself, doesn't need to answer a thousand prying questions, and is this what Nanase is trying to say when he spouts his water-obsessed bullshit?

Either way, Rin figures this is the closes he'll ever get to heaven, after his lifetime of fucking up, so he might as well enjoy the precious blankness, the _nothing_ , while it lasts.

It lasts for about eight seconds before Lady Luck, who Rin thinks is on her period or something, judging from the hate she seems to have for the world in general, and for him in particular, decides to take matters into her own hands. Because of course Rin can't have _one normal fucking day_ of swimming in this accursed town.

He feels him before he sees him, naturally.

A thrill creeps over the back of his neck, and he can almost _sense_ the cobalt aura steadily catching up behind him, and _why does this have to be Rin's life._

Nanase Haruka did _not_ just dive into the neighbouring lane. Oh _fuck_ no.

 _Oh fuck yes_.

And so what if Rin abates his smoothly cleaving strokes for the barest second to make up for his head start in this new, undeclared race?

 _All was fair in love and war, after all._

 _The only question was, which one was this?_

But they're neck-and-neck now, Haruka taking the bait even before Rin throws it, and how does anything else _matter_? What considerations, what rational fears have any importance whatsoever when pitted against the roar of _speed_ in his ears, the tingling of his entire body, the ice-rush of water against his hands, face, chest? And above anything else, what other feeling even came _close_ to the _challenge_ crackling between the two of them, the electricity sizzling in the water as the world narrowed to cobalt and carmine, ruby and sapphire? Nothing but each other.

And oh fuck _yes_.

Rin is vaguely aware that he's panting, chest heaving for air as he puts _every fucking thing_ he has into the swim, adrenaline pumping wildly as he pushes, pushes, _pushes_. His arms, legs burn, and he derives some savage pleasure from it because the blur of electric-blue energy at his side is _not letting up._

 _Just_ the way he likes it.

The wall is just three meters ahead, now. Rin is so close he can almost _taste_ it, victory dangling tantalisingly near as they close in on the final stretch… two, one…

 _Slap_.

The sound resonates, unnaturally loud, through the natatorium as their hands hit the wall at the _exact same time._

Everything is silent for a moment.

There is no sound as Rin just looks at the wall in disbelief, catching his breath, before he finds his voice again, conscious of the gazes of everyone who had stopped to watch the competition.

"...Haru."

He doesn't know what else to say, and the residual adrenaline still has him on edge.

"Rin."

Haruka's expression is as impassive as ever, but Rin is pleased to note a dull flush staining his cheeks, and his uneven breathing. Belatedly, the exhilaration from his swimmer's high floods through him, and he _laughs_ , throwing his head back and pulling off his cap to run a hand through his hair. Fuck, he _hates_ not winning.

He doesn't know what to say to Haruka, so he _doesn't_ , just climbs out of the pool, retakes a position at the starting block, and raises an eyebrow at the other boy.

And maybe they've got a communication gap as wide as fucking Aqua Bridge between them, and maybe they suck at understanding each other, but Rin likes to think that he knows challenge when he sees it reflected in ultramarine, reflected in the stiffness of that pale form as it takes its place beside him and they burn out their incandescent, unvocalized emotion again.

"Oi, Haru, get out. I need to go back to the dorms and finish a shit-ton of assignments."

Rin throws the remark over his shoulder as he walks around the pool to grab his towel and dry himself off. It's long after practice is over— the hours had simply flown by as he'd raced the other boy tooth and nail, revelling in the heady rush of the something he could never quite have. Mikoshiba had simply shaken his head at the two of them before tossing the keys to Rin and telling him to lock up after they were done and not get screwed by the adminstration.

Now, though, the sun has sunk to fiery reds and oranges in the sky, and Rin, figuring he should at least _try_ to be less of an instinct-driven fuckhead, makes an attempt to be responsible and get some studying in today instead of just swimming laps all night.

In hindsight, he should have considered that Haruka was a fucking _water-obsessed freak_.

"You can go back."

The deadpan response from the ink-haired form floating in the water, eyes closed, is enough to rouse Rin's annoyance, which always seems to bubble just under the surface when Haruka is around.

"You idiot," he snaps, "I have to lock up before I go, and I'm sure as hell not leaving a moron like you alone here."

Rin barely catches the annoyed mutter of _I want to feel the water_ as Haruka unwillingly swims to the edge and pushes himself out, because his eyes are suddenly fixated on the curve of his backside, outlined just a _little_ too well in his jammers.

"You know, Haru," he smirks to cover up the moment of blank panic on his face, tearing his gaze away before he gets caught staring, "you spout all this bullshit about wanting to feel the water or whatever, but deep down inside, you hate losing just as much as I do."

And with that parting shot, he turns and walks off towards the changing rooms, so that he can _freak_ _the_ _fuck_ _out_ in peace.

 _Haruka's ass?!_

 _What the fuck?_

He's been around half-naked bodies in tight-fitting clothes practically _all his fucking life_ , and he's never stared at another guy's body before. Maybe to compare their builds, but never with such… _prurient_ intentions as he'd been practically eye-fucking Haruka with.

Fuck, fuck, _fuck_ , just let this be because of a fucking homosexual athlete's boner or something and not because he is, god forbid, _attracted_ to Haruka or something.

Because he most definitely _isn't_. He _isn't_ attracted to that wild, inky hair that looks somehow soft even though Rin knows that Haruka can't have been taking any special care of it. He _isn't_ attracted to those long, sooty lashes that flutter against stark cheekbones, not to that subtly muscled, lithe form that Rin knows he can bend and _break_ and make _beg_. And most _definitely_ not to that apathetic mouth that turns just slightly downwards at the corner when he's annoyed, or falls just a little open as he pants while coming down from an adrenaline rush.

He wonders just how _else_ that mouth can look.

 _Shit_ , Rin's hand begins creeping down his abdomen, down, down, _down_. He isn't even bizarrely aroused by the muted defiance, the unwillingness to _submit_ to Rin that he sees burning in that blue gaze. That boy just has something irritatingly _different_ about him—

"I don't."

" _Fuck_!"

Rin jolts so violently that he bangs his shin against the table.

"What in the _holiest temple of fuck_ do you think you're doing?" he half-screams as he snatches his hand away from where it'd been toying with the elastic of his swimsuit as if it's been burned and uses it to rub at the sore spot on his leg. _How_ did Rin manage to get so lost in his unholy thoughts that Haruka crept up on him unawares like that?

Maybe this is karma.

Shit, shit, shit, _motherfuck_.

 _Had he been thinking out loud?!_

Fuck, Rin is going to abandon his dreams, escape to Australia, and take up sheep rearing. He does _not_ need to make himself _more_ vulnerable in front of those eyes that already feel like they're looking uncomfortably deep every time they sweep over him—

"I don't hate losing."

For a moment, Rin just blinks at his inscrutable expression like an idiot, so convinced that Haruka had heard him that the only thing he was expecting out of him was disgust or a disgruntled taunt.

"-Huh?"

"I. Don't. Hate. Losing."

That mouth (that _mouth_ ) turns down in annoyance as Haruka repeats himself, enunciating every word as if speaking to a child. The dormant flare of irritation in Rin's chest bursts into smoulders again, going to make a cutting retort, but he stops short when his annoyance-heightened senses suddenly register two things.

One, Haruka did not, in fact, hear him.

And two, they're standing _really fucking close_ right now.

"Oh yes, you do, Nanase," something reckless in Rin's chest rises up in sheer _relief_ , and he stands his ground instead of taking a hurried step back as his quickly diminishing rationality is screaming at him to do.

"No," and _god help him_ , but the cerulean flame that suddenly ignites in Haruka eyes at Rin's wordless acceptance of his challenge is doing _things_ to Rin.

"I just hate losing to _you_."

Haruka's statement is quiet, but there's no mistaking it from the way he's looking at Rin— he's baiting him, _daring_ him to retort.

And so Rin does what he always does when the other's candor strips him of responses.

He lunges forward and presses Haruka back against the lockers, their faces mere _inches_ apart.

"I _will_ defeat you, Haru," he growls out into Haruka's ear. "More than that. I'll _crush_ you. You _will_ bend to me."

And it's worth the effort of it just to see the ocean eyes go wide for a split second, the measured breathing speed up.

"You can only dream, Rin," Haruka quickly regains his composure, biting back with equal vehemence. "Can't do a _thing_ except cry and dream."

Rin's hands, almost inadvertently, press him back harder as he glares.

" _Fuck you_ , Haru," he snarls at him. Haruka just meets his gaze, unflinching, and Rin _can't_. Because that look hasn't left his eyes, the one that wordlessly taunts him.

 _The one that dares him to follow through_.

 _God fucking dammit,_ he can't.

He feels like he'll spontaneously combust if this goes on a _second_ longer, so he rips his hands off the other boy, squeezing his eyes shut and pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.

" _God_ you piss me off," he mumbles, half to himself.

"Maybe," Haruka replies, and the ghost of a smirk flits across his face. "But I also turn you on."

Rin freezes.

"What did you _fucking_ say to me?"

His voice drops to a dangerous pitch, and he barely registers his own movement before Haruka's back is thudding against the lockers again, Rin at a proximity to him that could be deemed as compromising, sharp teeth bared in an honest-to-god _snarl_.

A raven eyebrow is just raised at him in answer, and Rin swears he can sense the _you heard me it_ directs at him.

"No," he snarls, and their breaths are now mingling with the lack of space between them, and Rin can't stop, _can't fucking stop_ his own hands as they come up to grip Haruka's chin, hard enough to leave bruises. "No. _No_."

"Lies," Haruka returns simply. And fuck, Rin needs to _shut him up_. He can't take the facts laid out so bare for him to see. And fuck, he is suddenly hyperaware of their bare chests pressed together, his heart crashing against his ribcage from the coalescence of sheer _rage_ and sheer arousal, and… dare he say it?

Sheer _Haruka_.

Because he's going to kiss Haruka now, isn't he. He's going to kiss his stupid, unflappable, _enticing_ little mouth and make it fall open under his, make it relinquish the _control_ Rin so desperately craved. Which would probably be followed by them fucking fast and hard and _dirty_ on the changing room benches, like in just about every single yaoi manga Rin will never, _never_ admit to occasionally flipping through.

And maybe it's Haruka, this time, who reads something of Rin's thinking off the screen of his predatory gaze, because his breathing quickens almost imperceptibly, a flash of something in his eyes he tries desperately to hide, the faintest tremble of his mouth.

Well, _too fucking bad_ for him that the redhead is now too up close and personal for Haruka to be able to hide _anything_ from him any longer.

 _No more fucking hiding._

Their trembling lips are almost, _almost_ brushing, now, and Rin is torn.

Should he do it?

 _Should he?_

"Rin…," Haruka murmurs, and it comes out as nothing more than a halting whisper.

And all at once, it's like he isn't here any more, like he's hurtling back through the fuzziness of time.

 _Rin._

 _I, Matsuoka Rin, hereby solemnly swear to never let my emotions get in the way of my swimming again._

 _I swear to never cry again._

 _Rin._

 _Rin, what's wrong?_

 _You're flying off the rails, son._

He can _not_ fly off the rails.

He can _not_ let base emotion interfere with his swimming.

He can _not_ kiss Haruka.

The realisation hits him like a deluge of ice water, and he pushes himself away from the other boy, sucking in a breath like he's drowning.

" _Fuck_ ," he mutters out, dropping his gaze from the deadlock of flame and frigidity. He runs a hand through his hair, and wonders, in vain, whether Haruka finds it as hard to breathe, whether he feels the loss of contact as acutely as Rin does.

He can't afford to find out, so he does the only thing that makes any sense in the excruciating awkwardness of that moment.

He grabs his towel, and gets the _fuck_ into a shower stall.

Seriously, _fuck_ Haruka.

 _In every single fucking way possible._

It's all because of that fucking moron that Rin has two extra assignments due Monday _and_ a burgeoning erection, into the bargain.

Rin sighs and strips off, lets the heat of water scald away the memory of Haruka's body pressed up against his, turn to vapour the memory of every hitch and drop of that voice.

But those _eyes_ , how can he forget?

How can he forget the the limpid, shimmering blend of sapphire, ultramarine, cobalt, azure, and every other fathomable blue in the spectrum? _How_ can he just disregard the way they can morph from crystalline ice to an oxyacetylene flame in a matter of seconds, the way they can lay him down and strip him bare for the world to see, the way they say things between the two of them his mouth never needs to?

Because Rin was wrong, earlier. What drew him to Haruka the most wasn't his body, or his lips, or even his contrariness.

It was those _fucking_ eyes.

They burn a hole into his reminisces even now, sending that all-too-familiar thrill over him, and he sighs as he trails a hand down his body, down, down, wanting ridiculously to _cry_.

When he stumbles out of the shower, mentally, physically, emotionally drained, the changing room is empty and the tell-tale patter of raindrops is just starting to sound against the panes.

Lady Luck fucking _hates_ him.


	3. Valediction

_English had never been so fucked-up._

Or maybe it's just that he has never been so _royally shitfucked_ in his entire life, Rin reflects bitterly, stabbing his pencil into the single, lonely sheet of paper adorning his desk. The digital red numbers facing him in silent, electronic censure, ensconced in their black plastic body, have blinked their way from 9:00 to 9:30 to _fuck-all,_ and his only valuable contributions to his English assignment as yet have been a meticulously underlined heading and sundry crossed-out scribbles.

Rin fights the urge to shriek, punch the table and then spontaneously start gyrating against the chair or something, instead limiting himself to muttering a steady stream of profanities under his breath as his eyes scan, for the billionth time, over the poem he's supposed to be critically analyzing. He sighs and runs a hand through his hair, displacing his hair tie and shaking stray strands loose over his forehead. Jesus _fuck,_ isn't Watanabe supposed to be inundating them with bloody _Shakespeare_ or whatever it was that starred in English teachers' wet dreams?

 _And yet,_ a nearly unbeknownst, caustic smirk, _here we are._

Almost involuntarily, he mouths the words from memory, his lips curving along the syllables with the facile flow of repetition. His finger traces over the print of the text, like maybe the noir of the ink will transude his skin and somehow explain the cabalistic magnetism of the verse. He glares through hooded eyes as if sheer assiduity can construe just what it is that has him somehow unable to just slam his books shut and call it a day already.

 _Some say the world will end in fire,_

 _some say in ice._

 _From what I've tasted of desire,_

 _I hold with those who favor fire—_

"Matsuoka!"

The sound makes him jump about three feet in the air and effectively demolishes anything close to a copacetic submission he'd managed to cobble together in his cogitation. He internally groans, slumping down on his desk. He _knows_ that voice.

"What do you _want_ ," he grouses, not bothering to raise his head from the desk when, sure enough, Mikoshiba bursts in three seconds later without so much as a by your leave. The last thing he needs to add to his shitfest of a day is the swim captain's entirely unwarranted exuberance.

"What I want is for you to drop the attitude," Mikoshiba says, frowning briefly at Rin's lack of welcome before livening up again. "And to get some train fare ready."

"….?"

 _Train fare?_

If Mikoshiba is taking them on _another_ trip around town to rescue stray cats stuck in trees, wherein he's going to have to extract scratching, yowling tabbies from trees because _you're built for it, Matsuoka,_ Rin swears he's going to send his captain's limp-dick nudes to Gou.

So he just raises a questioning eyebrow, contingency plan at the ready, and almost gets jabbed in the eye with the piece of paper Mikoshiba waves at him.

"Look at this, look at this and tell me this isn't the best idea in Samezuka captaincy history!"

Rin can barely make out the heading on the pamphlet that is being brandished in his face because his captain is literally _quivering_ with excitement.

 _The Training Camp from Hell – Samezuka Edition!_

"I was... ermm, _having a chat_ with Gou-kun after joint practice yesterday, and I managed to get her to brief me on Iwatobi training regimen," Mikoshiba starts talking before Rin has opportunity to ask him why this plan of his sounds like the title of a bad porno. "Most of their lineup is pretty basic, but there was one thing that got my attention."

...

 _Wait._

"They're swimming long distances in the sea to build endurance because it's Iwatobi tradition or something," his captain tells him, waving a dismissive hand. "But the point is, there's no way I'm letting our team fall behind."

Rin suddenly has a very, _very_ bad feeling, a sick churning in his gut making him want to throw up.

"So," a self-satisfied grin, mercifully oblivious to Rin's steadily intensifying nausea, is flashed in his face, "We're giving it a Samezuka twist."

Okay, he's now _sure_ he's going to puke. The only thing he's confused about is whether he should aim at his stupid fucking assignment, or Mikoshiba's _stupid fucking face._

"…I'm not interested in copying some lame shit they're doing."

For a moment, his aloof veneer cracks, wide-eyed panic gaping through, leaving Rin scrambling to pick up the pieces, glue it all back together before anyone has time to blink and notice the difference. "And I'm not dragging myself to some deserted island just because you want to stare at my sister in a swimsuit."

He's started breathing harder, fidgeting more, but he's managed it. This time.

"I don't know who you think you are, Matsuoka, but I'm sure as fuck not letting you sabotage the interests of everyone else just because you don't have an iota of team spirit," Mikoshiba barks at him, finally losing his patience with Rin's bitchiness. "You're doing this with everyone else, or you're off the team."

"…"

"…"

 _Motherfuck._

Since _every single fucking agency_ of karma is out to fuck his life like it's a gratis hooker or something, Rin should have known he'd lost this one before it had even begun. The belated realization does absolutely nothing to stop him from staring the captain down for a full, tense minute out of sheer stubbornness before he shunts his gaze off to the side, exhaling through clenched teeth in irritation. Seriously, _fuck_ Mikoshiba and his coercive machinery.

"…Whatever," he mutters, scratching the back of his neck, grateful that the movement obfuscates the tremble of his fingers and the dampness of his palms. _Whatever_. He doesn't even care what he's gotten himself into, he just wants the other boy _gone_. "Now, I have a shit-ton of homework that's not going to do itself, so if you would _kindly_ leave me to it…"

It's only when Mikoshiba shuts the door behind him with a cheery _I knew you'd come around_ that the algid shiver of absolute _dread_ that had been biding its time during the conversation makes its way, full-force, down Rin's spine. And because _of fucking course_ he's Matsuoka Rin and he has to fuck himself over in every single way known to mankind, another incommodious thought follows at its heels.

 _That was a Haruka thing he just did, wasn't it?_

 _Shit,_ he feels a scream of frustration aggrandize low in his throat. It was _totally_ a Haruka thing.

So Rin was right. Water-obsessed freaks are contagious.

Fabulous. Any day now, he's going to wake up with an inexplicable, all-encompassing craving for mackerel and Makoto's dick.

And the fucking icing on the goddamn cake is that he can't even seek a sabbatical from the water-freak pathogens because Mikoshiba refuses to get it through his thick skull that there's not enough room in the _world_ for Haruka and himself, let alone on some uninhabited island where the odds of running into him are ten to one.

This is _just fucking great._

* * *

"Ummm … senpai?" Nitori's voice pipes up from somewhere behind Rin. "If you don't want to break your fifth pencil of the night, you might want to press a little less hard?"

Rin can in no way comprehend exactly why the passage of another hour finds him unmoving in his seat, fingers clenched convulsively around said pencil, still skewering his long-suffering paper. In light of events just transpired, he should fuck it all to hell, maybe go for an exigent run and then sink into bed, mercifully too drained to think of the horror-movie carousel his life is rapidly mutating into.

But he isn't.

He's sitting here, and _he's thinking about it._

Theoretically, he knows that he has little to fear. He's stronger than Haruka, he's a _better fucking swimmer_ than Haruka, and he knows (he _knows_ ) that if it ever came down to a confrontation between the two of them, he'd easily come out the victor. It was common knowledge. Isn't that what even the fucking poem says?

…

 _Stop fucking kidding yourself, Rin._

Like an ill-favored, arctic draught, the latter half of the verse creeps into his recall.

 _But if it had to perish twice,_

 _I think I know enough of hate,_

 _to say that for destruction; ice_

 _is also great, and would suffice._

And that sums it all up for Rin, doesn't it. In breviloquent, yet somehow dactylic terms, it tells Rin what he _really_ knows.

In actuality, he has _every reason_ to be scared.

"Nitori," he returns amicably. "Go fuck yourself with a cactus."

* * *

Rin can't sleep.

He's in his hotel room, muscles aching after a grueling day of long-distance swimming and dying to just roll over and sink into the blessed oblivion of syncope. But turning on the air conditioning when he was still soggy from a day largely spent submerged had been practically _asking_ for a cold, and he had consequently demurred. So here he is now, lying in bed with the windows open and the white chintz curtains barely fluttering in the fluctuant breaths of breeze that stir in the quiescent air from time to time. It is the kind of sultry, balmy night reserved for festival evenings, the muggy stillness carrying within itself the tepid foretelling of a summer typhoon.

In other words, even with the creak of the fan going at full speed and the long kicked-off sheets, it's _pretty damn uncomfortable._

With a resigned groan, Rin rolls over and off the bed, and walks to the large window across the room. If he spends any more time in bed, growing increasingly attuned to the rustling of foliage and the chirping of crickets from outside, he's going to go crazy.

 _Oh, the irony._

Because the little indications Nature drops from under her spangled cloak; hints that she is, in fact, _alive_ , are something Rin has eagerly gathered up, reveled in, been soothed by, right from his light-hazed days of Popsicles and laughs too loud and grins blinding bright. He can hardly believe these to be the same nuances that now exacerbate the itch crawling just under his skin.

He sighs and leans his elbows against the sill, resting on them as angles his torso out of the window to inhale deeply. The uniquely marine scent of flotsam and sea foam and salt sets his senses to tingling as he opens his eyes to the seafront that holds an otherworldly mien by night.

It's just another sweltering summer night in Japan, but everything looks different by the water.

By the water, he can imagine that none of it exists. That the vitriol and the antagonism that he's clung on to like poison ivy has all been washed away in the swell and ebb; that the solicitude the inimical presence of blue in the air had enveloped him in has dissipated in the coolness.

But because the world is not a wish-granting factory, and because that water-obsessed _freak_ hasn't permitted Rin even the closure of actually coming face-to-face with him and finishing what he'd started that unbearably charged evening in the locker room, the itch stays. He's left to suck it up and deal with it, tamp down on the restlessness that rears its head somewhere in his chest and his spine and his fingertips all at once whenever the tell-tale smell of mackerel tints the air, without the swish of dark hair and the monotone of an apathetic voice to culminate in.

Rin lets out a long, low exhale. Maybe he should give up on the idea of sleep, and go trail his fingers through brine-water, feel the cold, grainy sand beneath his toes. Goodness knows he'll get more R&R that way.

* * *

 _How long has it been since he's done this?_

The waves wash against the shore on just that side of high tide, and the occasional murky cloud momentarily obscures the pale glow of the moon as Rin skips a rock across the surface of the water, watching the breakers swallow it up. The sand he pushes his feet into is pleasantly cool and pliant under his weight as he leaves indentations trailing behind him in the course of his walk. Muffled by the background thrum of stoic Neptune, his disquiet seems somehow… bearable.

And whatever Haruka might taunt him with in his annoyance, it slowly dawns upon Rin in this moonlit promenade at ass-o-clock in the morning, that he loves the water just as much as his entrant.

Just in a different way.

Because for Rin, it isn't the water so much as what he can _do_ with it. How he can cleave through the malleable insubstance and feel, fleetingly, weightless. And come out the other end to the resounding cheers of an audience, be lauded for chasing that floaty feeling.

 _Just in a different way._

Rin's soliloquy almost leads him to run headlong into a copse of date palms that straggle along his path, their skeletal shadows eclipsing the meager luminescence of the night. Swearing a blue streak at his subsequent stumble into the obscurant sedge, he braces against coarse bark for equilibrium and leverage enough to gingerly overstep the undergrowth and lumber into the nebulous clearing it shelters.

 _"What the—"_

The gasp leaves his mouth before he can stifle it; because here, on this forgotten stretch of beach, at _ass-o-fucking-clock_ in the morning, someone is _there_. A pale-skinned figure is standing at the edge of a little inlet of sea, body poised to dive in. _Very_ familiarly poised…

"Forgot your swimsuit, Haru?" Rin quashes his first, overwhelming urge to avert his eyes from the bare, resplendent form before him, his unashamed, unclothed body almost shimmering in the moonlight, by rending the suddenly loaded silence with a cocky jab.

He sees the shoulders before him tense— Rin dares not look any further south— but Haruka doesn't deign to turn around, or give any other indication that he's heard him. Just when Rin is about to advance another snarky comment, because it's _Haruka_ and how can he not goad him further at every opportunity he gets, a barely audible, flat, "it got wet," comes in reply.

"…Tch."

Rin is not sure how to reply to this disconcertingly matter-of-fact retort, so he settles for clicking his tongue in annoyance. Somehow, this emotion is so easy to procure, when it comes to the other boy, that he reverts to it like it's his default setting every time Haruka's bluntness throws him. And _everything_ about the brunet seems to spark the incandescence simmering just under Rin's façade— that aggravatingly unruffled cobalt of those eyes, like a window into the ocean at its calmest, the way his skin seems to glow like rose quartz in the silvery pool of light that filters through the leafy canopy, that bleaches the sand to white and the trees to ghostly frameworks.

As he always had, and more strikingly so in this stolen, illusory moment, Haruka reminds Rin of a poem; what with the flowing planes of his alabaster body, stark against the dimness of twilight and his aquamarine pools of eyes like an effervescent spring, that say everything and nothing all at once. The delicate undulations of his physique, vignetting into the night, sieve out a verse from his distant recall.

 _Where the mind is without fear, and the head is held high,_

 _where knowledge is free._

 _Where the world has not been broken up into fragments_

 _by narrow domestic walls,_

 _where words come out from the depth of truth._

 _Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection._

 _Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way_

 _into the dreary desert sand of dead habit._

 _Where the mind is led forward by thee_

 _into ever-widening thought and action._

 _Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake._

"Have you even been training? You still look as weak as ever," he says hastily, maybe too histrionically, even, to deviate his train of thought from the cesspool it would invariably lead him into, and determinedly disregards the surge of satisfaction that swells through him when he spies the head twitch that means he's successfully getting on Haruka's nerves.

"If you're done staring at me, leave already."

The answer is pitched no differently from the rest of their conversation. It speaks of no lilt of innuendo, Rin's rationality assures him of it, _cool down, mind over matter,_ but his hackles nevertheless stand to attention with the threat of it. Because this is Haruka, and every syllable that falls from his lips is rife with threat, howsoever veiled.

"I _wasn't_ staring at you," he bristles, and maybe something will transpire normally for once in their fucked-up dynamic. Maybe this will be the part where Haruka turns around, sapphire eyes spelling out acquittal and absolution, and tell him, with no hint of mirth in them, that he was joking; so he snickers in anticipation. "What, you think I've never seen a guy in the buff before?"

But Haruka is silent, the same, heavy silence that bespeaks a thousand and one contemptuous jabs that he can't be bothered to verbalize. And _fuck_ anyone who tells Rin he hasn't a shred of intuition, because he can read Haruka's thoughts, clear as cut glass, right now.

 _Like you weren't staring that day?_

 _You're pathetic, Rin._

A murky cloud drifts over the milky orb suspended in the night sky, and casts their little world of a littoral clearing into sudden half-light.

And something inside of Rin just. _Snaps._

Splinters and fragments the moment the argentine glow casting the form before him into a untouchable, unearthly lustre is eclipsed; the moment the imperious sceptre keeping him and his lupine instincts at bay ceases to luminesce. And the incendiary realization that no matter _what_ he does, what he _becomes_ , Haruka will always be one step ahead, eyes icy and filled with contempt as he watches Rin flounder from atop his pedestal stabs through him anew.

It's as if his life is playing back to him on a reel, and he's reliving his own movements from a previous experience as film-Rin and himself both advance, limbs almost unconscious of their own kinesis. In slow motion, they close the distance between themselves and Haruka in three long strides, in a decelerated haze they grab Haruka's shoulder and yank it around so they face each other, and they project their frustration.

" _Stop_ it."

For a split second, shock flits across those characteristically expressionless features, and Rin sees his own vicious expression reflect in ultramarine mirrors before they flit away from him like there is _so much better_ to see in the world. So he digs his fingers in harder, recalls the fleeting attention attention because he's had enough, _enough._

"Stop looking at me with that fucking— _condescending_ look on your goddamn face," he half-screams the threat of querulous tears burning behind his eyes, the turbulent roiling in his chest echoed by the heavens as they split apart, weighty rain-diamonds cascading down upon the two of them. Rin vaguely, inanely recalls this phenomenon's literary nomenclature. _Pathetic fallacy._

 _How fitting._

"Stop looking at me like I'm the same annoying kid from Iwatobi Swim Club, I'm— fucking _different_ now, do you get it? Just—," and fuck, _why_ are his hands shaking? " _Recognize_ me as your rival, already!"

"…Is that really what you think?" Haruka finally says, a long moment after Rin has exhausted his rant. A gale has started up, whipping obsidian locks of drenched hair about his face, and there's a queer catch in his voice. Something stirs in the lacustrine of his eyes when he echoes himself. "Is that really what you want?"

That temperature has dropped like a rock, but Rin feels a strange blaze clawing at his insides as he scrambles for an answer to what the unrelenting midnight gaze asks of him. He can't _think_ , the heat reaching almost unbearable proportions now, and it's indistinguishable amidst the howl of the wind and the pelt of rain, whether it's emanating from his own, slowly combusting body, or from Haruka, who's standing too close, _too close._

"Rin…," Haruka breathes, and Rin can hear the soft call, sharp as a knell, even over the typhoon.

He doesn't know who takes the step forward, but all at once, Haruka's downturned mouth is the only thing in his field of vision, that unfairly captivating, downright _enticing_ mouth. Out of the corner of his eyes, he sees onyx eyelashes flutter closed at the first, tentative brush of their trembling lips—

"What the fuck, Haru?" Rin staggers back, and it takes him a moment to spit this derision out. "What the _fuck_ do you think you're doing?"

"Only what you wanted me to."

Rin is not sure he's meant to catch what Haruka mutters under his breath, and he's not sure of the wisdom of rounding on him, and in the absence of clothing, grabbing onto his shoulders in absolute, unbridled _fury_ , in light of events just transpired; but excuse his reasoning for being somewhat shot after he's almost been kissed by someone who he thought saw him as nothing more than an annoying hurdle between himself and his enjoyment of the water.

He wants to shake Haruka, cock his fist back and fucking _punch_ Haruka, wants to demand of him _just how_ he dares be so presumptuous, but what comes out instead is, "What is your _level_ , Haru? Why can't I ever catch up with you?"

Haruka doesn't have an extensive range of facial expressions, unless you count not having one as an expression in itself. But now, _now_ his brows furrow and slant into a dark plane of strife, his aquamarine orbs spit sparks, and a dull flush dusts the high of his cheekbones as he retorts. "That's all you care about, isn't it?"

And Rin's not sure, he's never heard it before, but Haruka almost sounds _angry_. Not just exasperated, or irritated, but actual, proper _angry_. It translates in the way he shakes off Rin's grip in a swift, sinuous twist of his torso, and sweeps him one last scathing look before whipping around and taking off in the opposite direction.

 _That leads to…_

"Oi, Haru, _wait_! It's high tide, do you wanna fucking _drown_?"

Rin sprits after the rapidly disappearing figure, but it seems like the training Haruka has, in actuality, been doing, has chosen the most inopportunemoment to pay off, and he has barely reached the shore when a quickly subsiding ripple belies the other's leap into the swell of the waves.

"You're fucking crazy," he mutters, rooted to the spot in disbelief, salt and sand granules flecking his face, making his eyes sting.

An icy paralysis suddenly spreads from his heart to the peripheries of his body. The sheer brute _might_ of the heaving body of water before him has him hurtling back through Time's kaleidoscope, sending a gelid reminder of his powerlessness against the ocean shuddering up his spine. The acrid sharpness of pure, unadulterated fear rises to his tongue, for a moment.

"The ocean," he whispers to himself, "has the power to take everything from you in a single moment."

And then he braces himself, because goodness knows there's only one thing to be done between Haruka and himself when one of theme jumps headlong into the water.

And _goodness knows_ he isn't letting the ocean steal anything else from him.

* * *

When Rin had briefly pondered death in his father's wake, he'd always imagined this to be the worst kind possible— choking, inhaling gulps of brackish water, muscles screaming from the struggle against imminent capsize, tossed about on the breakers like a limpet. It was the fate whose threat had constituted most of the castigations he'd endured from his mother after having ventured too far into the sea, but he finds, strangely enough, that the long-engrained fear only lasts up until the first lash of salt-water against his flesh, burned away by molten-steel resolve. As the water engulfs him, as his muscles accommodate to the tidal pull, he stops wildly careening and starts _swimming_ , really swimming, towards Haruka, the dark buoy of his head intermittently visible against the tumult.

" _Fuck_ , wait, Haru!" he yells as he gains on him, the splash of water loud in his ears, fighting to hold his own against the cresting sheets of sea. They're both going to drown, at this rate, but Rin isn't even remotely surprised when his outcry fails to evoke a response.

A jagged flash of lightning splits the sky, then, and Rin swears he sees the other boy look back at him. Look at him with the same smolder in his eyes he'd seen one unforgettable time before, the one that says _don't cry if you lose._

 _Oh._

His mouth curls into a snarl as he bows his head, redoubling the exertion of his strokes, more focused now on overtaking Haruka than on just reaching him. His vision tunnels, the world narrows down into adjoining lanes of crimson and cobalt and the grisly gray of unquiet ocean, and he barely feels the path-deviating currents swirling around them, so consumed is he by the kindling that propels him, that blazes with every single shred of rage, of confusion, of frustration that has haunted his sleeping and waking moments alike.

He feels _drunk_ , riding on the high of it as his heart threatens to beat out his chest, as his entire body thrills and tingles, not from the damp or the cold, but from the rush of the combatant presence at his side, neck-and-neck. Because this is familiar territory, he knows where he stands, what to do when they sound out, and it's just as simple as the water and bending it to your will the fastest.

 _I'm not letting you win this one, Haru._

* * *

When they finally run aground, it's more of a surprise than anything to Rin, who lurches ashore, sinking to his knees in the wet sand, and is almost knocked off-balance when another body knocks into him with oceanic leverage.

"Watch it," he mutters, instinctively steadying the other boy. The rain has let up some, now, and as a few slivers of watery moonlight reappear from beneath the retreating clouds, they throw Haruka's features into sharp relief. The flush of his cheeks has darkened to dusty rose, his chest is heaving with exertion, and it's a generally inviting picture, but Rin's erratic breath hitches in his throat and stops altogether when he takes in his eyes.

His _eyes_.

The tetrammine is, uncharacteristically, ensconced in _flames_.

It brings back, in a sickening rush, every reason Rin's pushed him away all those times before.

It also reminds him of _exactly_ why he jumped into the water behind him in the first place.

 _All this while, he'd been trying not to get sucked in._

A sharp inhale. _No._

He shoves Haruka away, down.

And then he speaks, as if empty words would somehow dispel the compelling, near-hypnotic draw that was steadily reeling him in.

"Fuck, do you _know_ — do you have any idea what a _dick_ move you just made?" he stops to catch his breath, somehow arrest the futility of it all,

 _because all this while, he'd also known somewhere inside him, that he was already, inescapably, in the eye of the vortex._

"Do you know what you did to—," he tries again, then, "oh, fuck it."

Because maybe Rin can fight ocean currents, and maybe he can overcome tidal waves, but he's powerless, _powerless_ against the energy the surges from every inch of his body, attracts him inexorably, magnetically, to the pole of opposing, electric-blue energy where he knows he mustn't tread. And he doesn't know why this fact has presented itself to him so absolutely in this moment, whether or not it has anything to do with the fact that he's just literally chased Haruka across an ocean, but it's _there_ and Rin can't turn his face from it any more.

So, for once in his life, he _does_ fuck it all to hell, he _does_ flick his sodden hair off his face, he _does_ lean forward and down, and, breathless, feverishly shivery, he kisses Haruka.

Rin has kissed people before. Fuck, he's _kissed_ people before, but when his quivering, chapped lips press against Haruka's, it feels on his last breath like he's slowly, deliciously combusting in the passion of the first kiss he's never had. It feels like their minds, bodies, _souls_ are fusing and amalgamating, a blitzkrieg of carmine and cerulean flame entwining in the slick slide of their tongues. Haruka's mouth tastes like stealing from his mother's sweet jar, like covert dips in the deeper parts of the sea, like trance-inducing narcotic, like everything beautiful and hedonistic and forbidden, and in that moment, Rin doesn't understand how he's ever existed without needing the scorching pressure like he needs air to breathe.

He only leaves go when the need for air grows acute, letting up a few centimeters so that he can take in Haruka's appearance, cheeks stained with flush, hair askew. His pupils look like everything Rin feels, blown huge and black with the viscosity of molten coal tar. The overt _sexuality_ of it sends a shiver of desire all down Rin's body.

"Only what I wanted, huh?" he throws Haruka's words from before back in his face. It's anyone's guess as to who the winner of their undeclared competition is, but the feeling that's inundating him, blinding him with its intensity, Rin can only liken to a winner's high.

"Shut up."

Haruka, Rin is pleased to note, sounds as breathless as he feels. His hands, nevertheless, breach against Rin's chest as he pushes him away. "Get off."

But Rin's head is still buzzing, some heady cocktail of adrenaline and arousal and Haruka coursing through his veins, and it pushes him to shove a knee between Haruka's legs, press upwards. _No._

"Rin, _stop_ —," he tries harder to separate them, but the sharp intake of breath that cuts off his sentence belies his reaction and Rin smirks.

"Why, Haru? Just admit it already," he descends back down to claim those upturned lips again, stealing both their breaths with the bruising force. "You act like you're so far out of my league, like you're way too good to be bothered with me, but _admit it,"_ he grinds his hips down, aligning the hardening ridge he feels underneath him with his own. "You. _Want_. Me."

He puts his lips to Haruka's ear to nip and lick at the shell of it, and the admission bursts forth from him like a prayer, too heavy to be suppressed any longer. _"Just as much as I want you."_

Haruka says something to that, but it's such a low murmur that it's lost in the pound of blood in Rin's ears as he divests himself of his soaked t-shirt. He doesn't want to hear anything the other boy has to say, anything that might bring him back to his senses.

 _Anything that fragments into …like this…_

He pins the other body down with his own, lets his hands trail over every inch of the subtle musculature while his teeth bite down, with a sudden return to ferocity, on the lithe curve of his neck.

He revels in the muffled moan that seems _wrenched_ out of Haruka at that, revels in the arch of Haruka's back when his tongue and fingers tease those indecently pink nipples into hard little peaks, in the almost-sigh that Haruka breathes out when Rin's fingers wrap around the turgid flesh of his cock.

"This is between you and me, Haru," he mutters, summing up the complexity of their skewed relationship into one, poignant whisper. "No one else matters."

Rin feels so incredibly, absurdly _powerful_ as he sucks a trail of purple-black bruises down Haruka's torso, down, down over the ivory jut of his hip, stopping millimeters from the swell of his arousal, that he can't help but breathe out an exhilarated laugh over the head of it, making it twitch. The control he's always craved, the control he has with the other boy at his mercy, with pushing his buttons the way he always seems to push Rin's; is intoxicating, and he wants more, more, _more_ of it, something to satiate the ravenous wildfire raging in his chest.

So he engulfs Haruka's dick in the heat of his mouth, sucks it down as deep as it will go. The rough drag of it scrapes at the back of his throat and instantly sets his eyes to watering, but the sound Haruka makes at that and the consequent rush of desire so strong it nearly has his knees buckling, makes it all worth it.

 _"Ngh—!"_

Even suppressed by the barrier of his hands, the little whimpering noises Haruka is making leak out and direct themselves straight to Rin's fraying nerves, blowing out his pupils and making his dick grow impossibly harder. He doesn't know how, even when he's laid out and completely at Rin's mercy, Haruka still manages to affect him like this. Fuck, it makes him _angry_.

So angry that he hums around the cock in his mouth and swirls his tongue around the head, hissing in satisfaction at the salty tang of precome that instantly fills his mouth, at the way he has to hold down the hips that jerk up into the suction, at the soft groan of disappointment when he pulls off.

"That good, huh?" His smirk now seems permanently affixed to his face. Haruka just tilts his head away, loosening his death-grip on fistfuls of sand.

 _Don't you fucking dare._

Rin grabs his chin and forces the cyan gaze to center on him again, witness him coat his fingers in saliva.

 _"Look at me,"_ his voice is low, dangerous before he melds their mouths together again, needing the sensation, the thrill of overpowering lust that melts over him like slow chocolate, to convince himself that this isn't a desert mirage, that Haruka won't disappear into wisps of powder-blue mist the moment he pushes too hard.

Slowly, savoring each point of contact, he traces down Haruka's body with his fingers, pausing to flick briefly at a nipple— the other boy gasping into the kiss— before he pushes Haruka's knee up and out, spreading his legs to nudge a spit-slick digit at his entrance.

The action seems to galvanize the other boy, who had remained tolerably malleable until now, and he jolts, grabbing Rin's hand as his eyes fly wide open.

"Rin, no, stop it!"

For the first time in the years he's known him, Rin sees him look… panicked. _Afraid_. Scared of what Rin can do to him.

 _Good_ , something savage in him, purring in satiation, whispers in his head. Let him mirror how he always makes you feel.

Rin makes to consolidate his thought with a sharp bite to Haruka's lip, one he knows will make him gasp gratifyingly, but it's _fate_ , it has to be, the way their gazes catch on each other as he leans in.

The way the distress in those indigo orbs makes him stop short.

 _This is what you wanted, isn't it?_ Soothing, a sharp, acerbic whisper sounds somewhere in his disarrayed consciousness. _Go on, then, take it. You know he can't stop you._

 _He can't stop me._

"You can't stop me," Rin says under his breath. The words are strangely invigorating, and he's about to follow through on them, but that damn _look_ in those eyes inhibits him again.

It's _fear._

Haruka is _scared_ of Rin.

 _Rin is hurting Haruka._

No.

 _No no no no no._

He doesn't want it like this, doesn't want Haruka to…

"…Whatever," he mutters, "it's not even worth it."

He pushes himself off Haruka, climbs off and puts a few feet between them, turning his face to the waves lapping at the shore. He doesn't need to be Makoto to read, without looking, the confusion the other boy's eyes are spelling out.

"It's not a fair fight. I'm not interested in winning over some guy who looks like he hasn't worked out in four years," he takes a few steps into the water, feeling the waves wash around his ankles. He doesn't dare to turn around, knows his expression will give him away. "We'll settle this after you've built some muscle."

He hears the shift in the sand, hears the thud of footsteps leaving gouges in the soft ground, but doesn't make much of it until something is grabbing his arm and whirling him around. He's about to shove Haruka away, maybe spit out a mouthful of abuse at him, but he can barely let out a gasp before his mouth is otherwise occupied.

Soft lips are covering his own.

Haruka is _kissing_ him.

Almost reflexively, Rin's arms come up to encircle Haruka's waist, and he has a sudden, absurd flash of how _romantic_ this must look, them intertwined in the middle of the sea by the pink-pale moonlight.

Romantic, when they're anything but.

Haruka's kisses are a perfect mirror of himself— slow, sensual; and to Rin, it feels like floating. Floating in an endless aquamarine haze, with nothing but the tranquility encompassing him, with nothing but his own feelings buoying him.

"We settle this _now_ ," he says, when they break the kiss, eyes ablaze in turquoise flame. They're daring him to challenge it, to walk out again. The expression is all the reassurance he needs.

"Fine," the predatory grin spreads over his face again. "But don't forget, you _asked_ for it."

And with that, he's pushing Haruka back down, kissing him like he's drowning, running his hands over his body as the smoky heat obliterates the last vestiges of his self-control. In a fever-haze, he spreads his legs again, strokes a finger over his puckered rim, drinks in the way Haruka gasps and tries to twist away despite himself.

Rin grits his teeth, because what, _what right_ does Haruka have to make Rin feel like this, to build him up to breaking point and then try to _run?_

"No, that's your forté, isn't it?" Haruka bites out, taunting, and Rin realizes he's thought out loud. "Running awa— ah!"

The words dissolve into a moan as Rin abruptly shoves a finger inside him, shutting the mouth that always has him at a disadvantage in this new, failsafe way.

"Rin, _wait!"_ Haruka is struggling, really struggling, now, and Rin has to fight hard to keep his position. "Go slower, I'm serious."

 _"No,"_ Rin's teeth glint in an animalistic grin as he subdues his combatant with his advantage in body weight. Before he leans in to claim his mouth again, he curls his fingers, just to witness the way Haruka throws his head back, stifles the obscene noise leaving his mouth behind his hand. "No, you're not."

The downright _dirty_ kiss that follows swallows both their moans as Rin unforgivingly scissors his fingers inside of the other boy, the sheer _heat_ of his insides compelling him to press his own, uncomfortably confined erection against Haruka's thigh for momentary relief.

"Hmmm, what's this?" he murmurs when he pulls away, a thin stand of saliva connecting the lips. He takes in Haruka's ravished appearance, lips swollen, burning eyes glaring daggers at him, hands still pushing ineffectually at his chest. "You act all cold around everyone, like nothing ever affects you, but someone just comes along and touches you the right way, and you moan like a slut for it, Haru?" he bites down his neck again, makes him flinch, before breathing hot again the wound. "How _lewd_."

He doesn't know where the words are coming from, he doesn't know what is possessing him to growl them, low and dirty, into Haruka's ear, except that he _likes_ the way Haruka reinforces his efforts to shove him away at that, and flushes a deeper rose; that he wants to yank him off his pedestal and lay his undeniable _humanity_ bare for himself to see, to take comfort in.

And so he does. He flips Haruka over, pins his arms to his sides when he tries to scramble out of the vulnerable position, and kicks off his shorts and underwear, hissing at the cool air against his heated arousal.

"Told you you should start working out more," he mutters, lining himself up with a few cursory swipes of a saliva-slick hand over his dick.

"No, Rin, let me—," Haruka's voice sounds different from anything Rin's ever heard before, pitched an octave lower and shaking enough to break as he almost displaces Rin in his resistance when he feels the blunt pressure against his entrance, who manages to immobilize him by sheer force of will. "Oi, are you _listening_?"

"Isn't it obvious?— ngh!" Rin starts pushing in, the sudden, constrictive heat around his cock so intense he cuts himself off with a grunt, feeling almost faint from the intensity of it. "I'm _not."_

 _"Ahhh!"_ Haruka's pained cry is the loudest Rin's ever heard him be, and he feels a surge of his old, savage satisfaction that he's the only one who's ever heard this, who's ever seen this side of Haruka where he's helpless to the sensory overload, where he has no choice but to take what he's given.

Not that he's doing so uncomplainingly.

"Just— stop— fighting— _already_ ," Rin gets out as he begins to thrust in earnest after giving them both a moment to adjust, with Haruka leaving deep claw marks in the sand as he tries to gain enough leverage to turn over, propel himself away.

 _Away from Rin._

For some reason, the thought infuriates him, fury burning white-hot inside him as he snaps his hips faster, the pace brutal, now. He's leaving bruises, it faintly registers, mottled splotches of purple-black marring the alabaster of his hips. Fuck, Rin hopes they'll stay, that the yellowing, peeling skin of them will remind Haruka that Rin can do this, that Rin is just as powerful as him, now.

"Stop fighting— _nnn_ — you?" Haruka gasps between each punishing thrust. "Then how would you _live_?"

Rin has no reply to the mockery, which strikes somewhere disconcertingly deep inside him, so he pulls out with a snarl and turns him onto his back to resume pounding into him with renewed vigor, determined to make Haruka forget his own _name_ , let alone coherency.

"Does it hurt, Haru?" he barely even realizes he's framing a sentence, hardly recognizes the voice that rasps it out, lust-shot and feral. "Tell me it hurts."

He needs to hear it, needs ratification of what he's doing, ratification that it's rendering Haruka as inarticulate as himself, unable to choke out anything except the veracity of a _yes, yes Rin;_ that Haruka is _accepting_ it.

 _"Fuck_ you."

It's the first time he's heard the other boy swear, but, really, what did he _expect_?

 _And what other way would he have it?_

The abuse just spurs him on, his mind _gone_ now, and he can just about get it together enough to respond.

 _"Oh?"_ he angles his hips, driving right into the spot that had made Haruka arch and moan deliciously on his fingers, as if to remind him of their position. "Pretty sure the opposite is happening, here."

And then he shuts his eyes, shuts out any retort the other boy might have had to that, and gives himself over to base instinct. He lets it drive his actions as his hands twine into Haruka's hair, as they force his palms away from his face so his tongue can delve into the open mouth, the kiss more a haphazard clash of tongues and teeth. He opens his eyes a fraction so that he can see the face Haruka's making, eyes screwed shut in a pantomime of euphoria, lips forming around words.

It's a while before Rin realizes he's panting what he's all but missed, before.

 _Not like this…_

He blocks it out, mind focused on this slide of their sweat-damp skin, the breathy little noises that his thrusts punch out of Haruka, and the curling low in his belly that warns him of impending orgasm.

But he _can't._

He'll be _damned_ if he gives himself over to the electrifying rush of sensuality first. He curls his fingers around Haruka's dripping cock, and strokes in tandem with each jarring slam of his hips. The strangled "Rin— _don't!"_ that comes from beneath him only fuels him to grip tighter, twist his wrist at the head, just the way he likes it done to himself.

And just when he's about to succumb to the wave of fiery, all-consuming pleasure that has all the muscles in his lower half tensing, he feels it— arms coming up to clutch tight around his shoulders with a broken cry of _too much, too_ much _, Rin; no more._

The high keen of " _Rin_ — Rin, _coming—!"_ resounds in his ears as blunt nails rake a burning path down his back before something warm splatters his abdomen. After that, it's nigh impossible to keep from hurtling over the edge, keep from letting paralyzing, white-hot pleasure sweep over him and take him under.

"Fuck, Haru!"

His hips stutter and the forearms bracing him tremble for a moment before giving way, leaving him to collapse on top of the body beneath him.

* * *

"Rin, you're heavy."

The annoyed complaint is the first thing that ushers him back into the realm of the living after his body has stopped shuddering from his high.

"…Yeah."

Finding he can't venture forth anything more substantial just yet, Rin settles for rolling over and letting Haruka up. Now that sundry figments of his sense have resurfaced, an absolute, black _dread_ inundates him.

What. Has he _done._

How. How is he supposed to _face_ Haruka, after this? How is he supposed to live with _himself_?

He casts about for something to talk about, something that can reintroduce some semblance of normalcy into their convoluted dynamic, tell him where the lines stand now.

He's coming up completely, frustratingly blank until he spares the heavens a despairing glance, and and conversation, somehow, isn't a forced flow any more.

"…Haru, look at the sky."

The venture is as simple as it was when he was twelve and untarnished and childishly excited at the night sky that one could only ever see in Iwatobi. He's half-expecting Haruka to ignore him, maybe even turn around and _hit_ him, but he complies wordlessly, and Rin can feel the shift in the sand as he tilts his head up, not moving from his side.

They share the view for a silent moment. Rin suspects that, like himself, the sheer _majesty_ , the quiet power of the galactic canopy sheltering them has bereft Haruka of all words. The clouds have all cleared away in the wake of he storm, giving them an unobstructed view of the velveteen cloak of Nyx and the million and one diamonds that glimmer from its folds.

"That stars look different, back in Australia," he finally says, then points at familiar patterns. "But I think that's Ursa Minor, and that's Cancer. It's your sign, isn't it?"

"I didn't know you knew about stargazing," Haruka replies, voice back to normal, now, but it's as if their ephemeral union has finally liquidized the wall between their spirits, because the realization that Haruka is trying just as hard as him, somehow… comes through to him. Haruka is saying _you remembered,_ and he _understands_ it.

"I watched constellations a lot when I was in Australia," he tells him softly, and because there's so _much_ they don't know, so many little things like this they've missed about each other, Rin lets just that little bit of honesty past him. "It felt like watching the night sky brought me closer to you, because it was one thing we still shared even though we were on different continents."

He abruptly leans up on his elbows, then, pushes himself to his feet, suddenly ungainly and awkward and embarrassed at his show of vulnerability, and chances a surreptitious glance at Haruka while pulling on his uncomfortably damp clothes. He looks normal, thank goodness for that.

 _But what of them now?_

 _What of them now he's made this confession and dispelled any ambiguity in his show of feeling towards the other boy?_

He grits his teeth, swallows, then stretches out his hand.

"Wanna see a sight you've never seen before?"

His palms are clammy with sweat. A cold chill makes its way down his spine, constricting his chest with painful intensity in the minute it takes Haruka to accept his hand, still half-convinced of repudiation.

Together they take the handful of steps into the water, and stand submerged knee-deep in the scintillating mirror of the phosphorescent night sky. It feels like an otherworldly space, such a true mirror to the overhead empyrean, that if Rin tries hard enough, he can imagine that they're submerged knee-deep in the galaxy that exists beyond earthly confines, in a stolen moment in time where nobody can touch them, where they have multitudinous celestial bodies keeping their vigil.

"Haru…," he begins, then trails off when the sapphire gaze arrests him. There are innumerable things he wants to say, a maelstrom of feelings he wants to put into words, but he knows that each vocalization will only serve to entrap them further in this pernicious web of myriad, unresolved feelings; further than is wise of safe for either of them.

So he leans in, one last time, standing in the heart of embodied Time, where it doesn't count, presses their lips together once, chaste, and ends it. "…Goodnight."

Snatches of the poetry that finds personification in every contour of Haruka's person, in every lilt and dip of his mannerism, in his calm, ultramarine aura, flit through Rin's mind.

 _Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high…_

 _…where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way_

 _into the dreary desert sand of dead habit…_

 _…for destruction, ice,_

 _is also great,_

 _and would suffice…_

 _…into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake._

 _If only._

 _If only they could be free._

He knows he's crying before he even turns away, the diamonds of teardrops blending indistinguishably into the jewel-encrusted sky beneath him, but for once he makes no attempt to staunch the flow. And when he takes one, final, look back, Haruka's face almost makes him retrace his steps. Because, for a fleeting moment there, Rin thinks he sees those frozen aquamarine pools melt into liquescence that trickles out over the curve of his fine-boned cheek.

He can't return to make sure, though, because now it isn't a few, easily surpassable meters of space that separate them. It is an entire, star-studded, shimmering universe.


End file.
